How was your weekend?

Monday, September 24, 2007

I just spent the last three days at Canada's first-ever Contestor Convention. It sounds like a legal thing, I know, but this wasn't for people contesting against something, it was for people who LOVE entering contests!

Oh. My. Gawd. For 72 hours I was just like everyone else. We all entered some form of contest at every opportunity whether clicking online, filling out a form, dropping a ballot into a ballot box or calling in to win on a radio station. It was heavenly.

And of course, there were prize draws! Yahoo! Luckily I left some room in my suitcase so that I could jam all of my prizes into it! Now I didn't take home any of the HUGE prizes (a laptop, a trip and a big pile of cash), but I did get to squeal with glee to collect a cooler bag, book, t-shirt and a gift certificate for a Toronto restaurant, to name a few. All in all I got to run up to the stage SEVEN times! I even made some speeches thanking my family, God, David Beckham and the contest club I belong to.

And yes, a song parody or two might have been involved:

Like a contestWon for the very first timeLike a co-o-o-on-testWith your ballot close to mine

how did you find this thing? and how amazed am i that once again, real life is more amusing than things we cudgel our brains to think up for manuscripts? i hope you're going to use this in your writing somewhere because otherwise, i will. i still smirk when i think about the newspaper article on championship grocery bagging competitions that appeared on a day i needed exactly something loony like that for the chapter i was writing.

dumbledore army update: am entering my 10-year-old every day in the contest to win a pair of tickets to attend j.k.rowling's upcoming local reading and hpathdh autographed giveaway

It found me, Maya! I actually wrote up the copy for the convention website and sponsorship package. ;) And don't go using any crazy contestors for your next novel...well, you can, but mine will speak from true experiences on the contest winner's journey. I've got a title all picked out and everything...